


For All That You've Done

by Berettasalts



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M, kinda sorta, not really - Freeform, puzzleshipping!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 18:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3579717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berettasalts/pseuds/Berettasalts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yami recalls the night Yuugi had almost died in the fire. Late-night conversations with Mutou Suguroku. Yuugi's grandfather recalls an encounter he had in the Pharaoh's tomb many years ago. Yami is a restless spirit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For All That You've Done

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a friend in an RP-verse, so excuse me if it doesn't strictly seem to fit canon. Mild Puzzleshipping.

The night of the fire that had almost killed them both was one that Yami would not easily forget. Even safe and sound at home, he could feel Yuugi’s restlessness, even fear. Yami could sense it in his tossing and turning, and in the deepening cracks in the solid stone that made up Yuugi’s soul room. Even though he didn’t go in there without permission out of respect to Yuugi, the urgent thoughts pressing at the edges of Yuugi’s mind made it difficult to ignore. Yami spent a few hours lying next to Yuugi on his bed, hoping it might calm him, and eventually ended up doing something he had stopped doing a long time ago - he took control without first asking for consent, sending Yuugi back to his soul room to rest and leaving himself to lay there awake.

Sometimes, in this body, he slept, but not often. Yami was simply too restless to ever really sleep. His mind was full of too many questions and he could not deny the persistent, nagging thought that said he was here for a reason, that he was _meant_ for something. He didn’t think it was a delusion of grandeur - it wasn’t as though he had dreams of glory, being the vaguely titled King of Games was enough fame for his liking. But with each passing day the feeling grew stronger.

Sometimes, he thought it might have been a mistake to abandon his purpose, using shadow magics to punish wicked souls. It wasn’t as though they didn’t deserve it. Thinking back on the people who had bullied Yuugi, the ones who constantly picked on him without even knowing him, still made him angry - he could feel the echoes of the ghost of that anger tugging at him, a desire to inflict pain that had not completely left him, no matter how much his hikari had changed him. Yami was a vengeful spirit. This, he knew about himself. He may no longer be angry, but he still craved justice, vengeance, and even if that was really all he knew about himself, it wasn’t likely to ever change.

But the fire, the fire had scared him. There were many ways he could protect Yuugi; Yami could keep him safe from just about anyone with the power to crush minds with a single thought. It shook him to his core to realize there was something he could _not_ protect Yuugi from, and to stand helplessly by with Yuugi unconscious and still clinging with such determination to _him,_ him of all things, an angry, childish ghost with nothing to offer the world -

_But you did, and do, have something to offer,_ his inner voice reminded him. He just wasn’t certain it was something he wanted to know.

With Yuugi resting in his soul room, Yami felt safe enough getting up to move around. There was a shelf of single-player board games in the inventory room and he had yet to try them all. He was halfway down the stairs when Yami found himself awkwardly blinking into the eyes of Mutou Suguroku, who had evidently been on his way to check on Yuugi.

“I - I,” he started, not sure what he should say. Suguroku would assume he was Yuugi and for all intents and purposes, it was best that Yami keep up this illusion. Yuugi’s friends had already figured out at least some of it - they spent so much time together, that was bound to happen eventually. Yami didn’t think Yuugi wanted everyone else to know, though. It was sometimes awkward enough around Anzu and Jounouchi in particular - even when they said they trusted him because Yuugi did, he still felt like an imposter. Yuugi was their friend, not him. He also had great respect for Jii-chan and had no desire to lie to him.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Jii-chan asked sympathetically. Just shaking his head felt safe enough, and that was what he did. He wanted to shrink by several inches; he could feel Jii’s piercing eyes on him and he felt as though Yuugi’s grandfather was analyzing him, looking for clues that his body (and mind?) were intact. Oddly enough, Yuugi had gotten that impression from his grandfather before, too. Since having solved the Millennium Puzzle, it was a feeling he had gotten on occasion, of his grandpa looking at him as though trying to discern the truth. Yami knew that feeling now, and he tensed under that penetrating gaze.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make you some Belgian cocoa,” Jii said cheerfully. Yami cheered some. Yuugi had let him try that novelty hot chocolate drink once, and it was _wonderful._ There was something very comforting about holding a hot mug in your hands, something that felt almost like the memory of a warm human hug - which was an odd thing for him to remember, as he had never had a hug from anyone except Yuugi.

_You probably have, you just don’t remember it._

“I don’t think I ever properly thanked you,” Jii-chan said, once Yami sat kneeling at the kitchen table under the dim evening lamp with a hot mug in front of him, filled with marshmallows. He looked up from his contemplation of the drink in silent query, and Jii smiled at him. “For what you did. Did you think I’d forgotten?”

Yami’s mind raced. What had he done? More importantly, what had _Yuugi_ done? At once, he realized Jii must be talking about Duelist Kingdom. Even Yuugi wasn’t sure how much his grandfather actually remembered from his time spent trapped in the shadow realm, but he must at least have realized that _something_ about it was not quite right. Yami would have removed those memories for him, if he could - but he didn’t have that power. Maybe he had once, but if so, it was a power that had long been lost to him since.

“You don’t need to thank me.” That was what Yuugi would say. Yuugi wouldn’t expect thanks from Jii for doing the only right thing, the only thing he could do. He needed his grandfather. Suddenly, Yami felt he was again intruding on a private moment. Suguroku should be saying this to his grandson, not to -

“You really _do_ think I’ve forgotten, don’t you?” Yami looked up again from an engaged contemplation of his drink, watching steam curl above the mug with intense interest. Suguroku was looking closely at him again. Yami tried to avert his eyes, wondering if the red irises would be a giveaway in the dim light.

“Have _you_ forgotten?”

“What?” Yami asked, looking up into Jii-chan’s calm gaze. His eyes, Yami realized with a shock, were less like Yuugi’s and more like his own. “What have I forgotten?”

_Everything?_

Jii-chan heaved a sigh and slid into a kneeling position across the table from him, holding a cup of tea for himself. He didn’t immediately answer, and Yami got the sense he was waiting for _him_ to break the silence, and that he was being tested somehow. Finally, he decided Duelist Island was a safe enough assumption. “You don’t need to thank me, Jii-chan. You know I only did what you would have done. What anyone would do.”

Jii-chan’s laughter was rich and hearty, considering his recent month-long stint in the hospital. “Not anyone. My Yuugi, certainly, yes. He would see it that way.” Jii-chan’s eyes pierced him again. “But you’re not my Yuugi.”

Yami froze.

“The two of you act like it’s some big secret, sneaking around the way you do.” When he put it that way, Yami actually blushed and looked down at his cup again. “You’re such different people. How long did you think it would really be before people would start to wonder?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Yami replied stiffly, still staring at his drink.

“It’s something to do with that Puzzle, isn’t it?”

He nodded. Lying was something he could do, Suguroku was not a person he could lie to.

“When he solved the Puzzle, Yuugi gave me life,” he admitted quietly. “It is a debt I will never repay - though I will continue to try, all the same.”

Suguroku was silent for a moment, contemplating that. Yami wondered what to tell Yuugi about this. Did he know that his grandfather knew? Would he care?

“That’s interesting,” he said finally, “because when I said I never thanked you, it wasn’t challenging Maximillion Pegasus I was talking about.”

“Then....?”

“It makes sense that you wouldn’t remember, though. You say Yuugi gave you life when he solved that Puzzle. I _gave_ Yuugi that Puzzle. It took him eight years to put it together, but there’s a reason I gave it to him in the first place - I felt it was meant for him because I remember you telling me so.”

Yami’s eyes widened. He had no memory of this, of ever having said any such thing. Was it possible Suguroku knew more about him than he had let on?

“I wish I could remember the location of that tomb, the night I met you, but I’m afraid it’s long gone from my memory,” he continued. “But you and I have met before. You always looked remarkably like my grandson - a little shorter, maybe - that was how I knew you were destined to go to him. It took me months to even remember the encounter, myself.”

“You remember the tomb?” he asked, leaning forward eagerly, unable to stop himself. Yami had no memory of a tomb at all, but if Jii-chan did -

“I only remember the encounter, not the location. That place was full of traps that I’d as soon forget,” he said, and shivered. “But I do distinctly remember that one of my guides betrayed me, and I would have fallen to my death into a pit of shadows, if you had not saved me.”

“I saved you?” This was news to him. It seemed that even before he had been given a body that wa able to walk and talk, Yami had been a very busy spirit.

“You pulled me up from that abyss. I might have believed I had imagined it, but there’s no other explanation for what happened. For why that guide didn’t simply let me fall and take the treasure for himself.”

For reasons he could not explain, the very idea of a tomb - _his_ tomb no less - being robbed of artefacts was highly offensive to him. Even though it had been Jii-chan - Yami wasn’t sure that his spirit self, whatever version that had been, would have been so forgiving.

“If you hadn’t saved my life...” Jii-chan paused, seemed to hesitate, and shook his head as he gathered his thoughts. “Things with Yuugi’s parents are... complicated. I wish I could tell him more. But he needs me. He was just a small child when it happened, when I made the trip to Egypt, but I don’t want to think about where Yuugi would be today if he wasn’t with me, if I wasn’t here. This is where he needs to be, and if it hadn’t been for you - if you hadn’t pulled me to safety all those years ago - “

Yami nodded gravely, because he was beginning to understand. Perhaps that was why he had spared Suguroku’s life all those years ago, in spite of his being a graverobber and a theif. While he had no memory of the encounter he had a fair idea of just how the vengeful child in him would have handled it. There must have been something in Jii-chan’s soul that had stopped him, something more important than even the grave sin of desecrating a tomb.

“Thank you,” Suguroku said again, more softly. “Not only for saving me, but for everything you do for Yuugi. For keeping him safe, and being there for him.” Yami’s stomach twisted with guilt - he hadn’t done a very good job keeping Yuugi safe while he was trapped in that fire. “He has friends now, and he’s going to need them. Every day you give him hope, and strength, and I think that all too soon he’s going to need both of those things.”

“Yes.” Yami nodded thoughtfully, brows creased in contemplation. “He can’t continue on the way he does.” It still felt strange to him talking about Yuugi to someone outside, even to Jii-chan - he felt much less exposed when they assumed he _was_ Yuugi. But he knew Jii-chan was right - and he had too much respect for the man not to take his words to heart. “Yuugi’s memories will catch up with him. He was upset that his parents didn’t call him today. He tries to pretend he isn’t, but I know that it hurt him.”

More silence followed, and Suguroku shifted in his seat. He seemed uncomfortable, which was unusual enough in itself. “It’s a complicated situation,” he said, and Yami could feel the closure in his statement. He sighed, and nodded.

Later, when Yami retreated and left Yuugi in control of his own body again, he wrapped his arms around him and clung to him tightly while Yuugi murmured in his sleep. Maybe, if he could hold his Aibou close enough, he could keep the dreams away, keep out the intrusive thoughts, mend the broken walls of his soul, and keep him safe from all harm as he had promised to do - maybe he could keep him safe even from the forces that seemed determined to set them down the path of a pre-determined destiny that he felt could only end badly.


End file.
